


little clown

by BitterlySpiteful



Series: Trickster [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Gods, Killing Your Siblings, Mild Gore, Nameless - Freeform, Names
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 04:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18909721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitterlySpiteful/pseuds/BitterlySpiteful





	1. rotted little holes in all my flaws

[i and also i will be your gods](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j9vIn59qqQ&list=PL-DZPjLPdcFlh0BgDQeV-7PCFBThcd7rC&index=33)

* * *

* * *

 

You had a name, once. It was cunning and vile and mischievousness and fun and  _chaos_ , and it was everything you once stood for, beyond what you remember now. It was  _you_ , it was your very essence, your soul, your heart. You had treasured it, kept it locked away as much as you could. You knew names were power - you knew what losing one could do to someone.

It was Qykysus to first find it out. You're not sure how he did it. He told your other siblings, and it enraged you.

So you... ate it. It was everything you once stood for, and it tasted  _delicious_. Like sour candy and salt. 

You had to have more. Nameless, purposeless, you hunted them down. Qykysus, the god of knowledge and magic was the first. And with his name, with that tear and gulp and the feasting on the intangible, you remembered some of yourself. You remembered how wily and cunning you were. And now, you are. You know other things, too, for his name was tainted with knowledge and magic. You stole his Mark, ripped it from the decaying flesh of the dead god, and you sealed it onto the crown of your head, behind your own Mark. It sits in your skull like a slab of rock, heavy with the weight of your sins and burdens.

Qykysus' people lost themselves. They started drifting inward, into the jungle, trying to reach the mark of their dead god, without even realizing why. Many died. You ate many of their names. They became the creatures that lurk in the Jungle, chittering and chattering at each other, trying to regain some purpose, trying to gain a name for themselves, even if it was not their own. Many more die, in those next few years. The Tribes do not seem to understand why their gods have abandoned them.

Imther, goddess of earth and fire - Burning so bright and so hot -  she was next. She fought and howled and tore a jagged strip of flesh from the side of your face, but you snapped up her name in the end. Wounded as you were, you still managed to kill her. With her name came a rush of euphoria, adrenaline, and the thrill of the hunt tore through you like  _lightning_. Her name was savory, like meat, but left a spicy taste in your mouth for months afterward. Without Imther, her Tribe descended to madness. They held too many feasts, starving themselves out, and they mined too much iron, too much for just hunting. They turned their aggression - a lasting effect from how their God died - toward the other tribes, and they incited war.

You sat back, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, because now you remember how much you had laughed back before you ate your own name.

It was around then that the other Gods finally noticed. Tezdos, the god of life and death, was the first to approach you, and his anger ate away at his core. **Death happens,** you reason, chittering, head wobbling back and forth like those of the Nameless do. **Death happens, and we live on, yes dear brother? Death happens.**

He'd attacked you, then, roaring his pain of the loss, the loss that never should have been, the loss that was not  _possible_  until now. Imther, Qykysus, they were our siblings! he shrieks, tail lashing, disturbing the dead souls on the scale, and splattering life-sand across where you two have met. Greenery grows and dies, and he stomps his feet and lowers both his heads and lunges. You dance away, barking laughs like hyenas, and in his rage, he plays right into your claws. You swallow down his name without another thought, and he is no more, just a husk. As with Imtehr and Qykysus, you rip the marks from his paws, and you seal them to the top of your skull, where they glitter like black and white jewels.

His Tribe becomes feral, as he was in those last few moments. They hold rituals and prayers and are  _disgustingly_  hypocritical, and you relish in the chaos it causes. With life and death in your grasp, you finally roam out of the Jungle, shedding your old home like a snake sloughing its skin.

Edia, the goddess of seasons and weather, is waiting for you, crouched in her fox form, and you think that is because she wants to please you, rather than because it is winter. She tries to plead, dodging your attempts at grabbing for her. **Just wait, brother, you are still you, just in pieces. We can fix this, just wait, we can fix-**

You rip her name from her, and it becomes yours. A storm unleashes the depths of hell and, in the thunder, you  _howl_. Her people, fearful of a storm their goddess did not warn them of, hide and stay in their shelters, until they are flooded out and forced to move. They flee, along with you, to the Jungle. But they stay at the edge, ever fearful of stepping foot into the poison. You have no such qualms, though now Edia's name inside you twitches in terror as you delve deeper, to the heart of your Jungle.

Cieyar does not come for you. You wait in the trees, watching the skies for them. When it is obvious that they will not come and fight, you slip into the river, and let it bring you to the sea.

And there they are, the god of seas and stars, waiting for you standing atop the ocean waves. Whitecaps race around them, foam billowing over your face from where their tail lashes and stirs up waves. When you rise from the water, you bring yourself to stand on it as they are.

 **Brother** , they say, and seem saddened that they cannot recall your name. **Brother, what have you done?**

**I have done what needs to be done.**

His name is salty, and cold, like ocean ice. But before you can savor it, you hear the melody. Bile rises in your gullet and you howl, twisting around to hiss at your last remaining sister. She is puny, compared to you, sitting atop her deer companion, quietly strumming that foul instrument. "You trickster," she says, but does not raise her eyes to meet yours. "You are no brother of ours."

You grow sluggish, weak, even as you try to surge forward to snap up her name. She doesn't move. You collapse to the ground before her, growls rising like tidal waves in your throat. She stands, as your eyelids slip close. You see her stag around, and you keep your eyes locked on her as long as you can, before you are lulled to sleep by the music.

When you wake, you are in the sea, floating like a dead thing. You grip your new names to yourself, feeling their emotions and tastes behind your breast bone. Sluggish, and tired, and somehow even more weary than you started, you return home.

In the heart of the jungle, with clouds of poison and the Nameless chittering their unknown language, with your siblings' Cores embedded in your skull like a crown, with a belly full of stolen names, you sleep.


	2. bad

[bad guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egZXmG4eyiQ)

* * *

* * *

 

The Nameless Gods lumber around you, circling you, ever-searching for their lost lives. They do not attack, though, because you hiss and spit and they are scared of you. Scared of the Wretched-Thing that made them like this. They are complacent, always watching with hollow eyes. Those eyes drive you  _mad_. You scream at them, **This is what needs to be done! Do not look at me like that, I am your God! Your ONLY! You are _mine_!**

But they do not speak to you. They have forgotten how to. They cannot remember that. They cannot remember being  _gods_. To them, they are shells, like those scattered on the beach, just waiting for a crawling-thing to take them. You hiss and growl and stomp until they circle further away, just at the edge of your clearing. Their hollow eyes follow you.

Riled by those stares, you howl your rage, spores flooding the Heart clearing. They dance away, eyes glinting eerily in the light of your spores. You hiss and spit and rattle your antlers until they back off further. But every time you turn around, you find the ones behind you closer.

Decades pass, and they continue to be there, encircling the Heart of your Jungle. Encircling you. Qykysus is the first to break that circle. Its shell comes lumbering forward, head twisted at a bad angle like you left his corpse as. The Nameless God stares at you, accusingly, pitifully. You stare back, and then twist your head to your breast and tear off a small,  _so small_ , crumb of a name you'd taken from a human. You feed the God from your hand. This not-so-nameless sort-of-dead-thing stares at you after it eats, then goes, and lays at the edge of your circle. Its brethren trample it underfoot in their clockwork marching. But one by one, in the order you killed them, they come to you, and then go to lay down and rot at the edge of your clearing.

They are like monuments. Still, and silent. Bones and flesh and once-was sticking out at odd angles. Like the ruins of an old civilization. They do not breathe; they do not move.

You sit back, preening to yourself. It is a handful of years later that a human manages to find you. The Gods lurch into motion, howling and clawing, and tear the mortal apart, flesh and soul, until there is nothing left to even  _leave_  a nameless wanderer.

You cackle. And laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh and  _laugh_. These once-gods are yours, now. They know who feeds them. Who created them.

And they would be damned to let anything ever happen to you.


	3. the hearse song

[the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMsxTUkEfQw)

* * *

* * *

 

**Qykysus**

the crum of a naem givehn to you tastes like slime and salt it is vile and it boils in yur gut like fury / your fethurs fall out rohtting before they hit the grownd then gro in just as quicklee and it  _itchis_

the ich drives you  _mad_  / you snap at anytheeng nere you / you shed fethurs when your neck twists around elongating and crunch a mortal in half with your beek / it tastes like metal but it is a relief from the sallt and goo dripping from yuur mouth and nose and eyes / you howl shaking your hed stumbling in your curcling / there are more mortals and theyre terrified but you cant get to them fast enough / one of your once-brethren is already feasting on them

you theenk you want to die

sumthing is tugging at your insides something like lohss and furey but it fades because you have only a crumb of a name and you cannot recall your once-was / you think you want to die / you hold such a feeling of lohss that you goh to your only-alieve-brother and you sob into his scales and feathers / youre moorning something you dont remember / you theenk you want to die / he pets yur molding feathers pulling away moss and dirt and he coos at you / but you have no name and no sense of knowledge of language and you cannot understand his words

you are alone

yu think you want too die

but yure not sure if you were ever alive to beegin with

* * *

**Imther**

mortal. snap up, crunch, roar your rage. something feathery and you eat that too, ravenous because the name on your tongue is like sand, like wood. sand and wood. burn.  _burn_. fire over your back. over your shoulders. you rage. bash your head against a tree until broken bones pierce out from your skin and skull.

you are hungry. and cold. fire over your skin and fur. you are cold.

your legs tremble when you stagger. your circle is interrupted when your once-was-brother falls. you trample him with your hooves. you eat at his flesh until the one behind you shoves you forward. you continue on. but you are growing weak. you are cold. cold. weak. you are losing strength. it's gone.

you collapse too.

and you cry. you howl your pain as your once-was-brethren continue to walk over you. you do not have the strength to get up.

you chew your claws. you eat the dirt in front of your face. your bones snap and mend in bad ways as your once-was-siblings keep going.

you cry. it is not like you to cry, but you do not even know what to make of that thought, as you have no memory of the once-was. you lay there as your brethren trample you, snapping bones and tearing muscles, and you just.

you cry.

* * *

**Tezdos**

You Feel Empty. You Feel Full.

Your New Name Tastes Like Rot And Sap. The Scale Weighs Heavy, Dragging, Clanging Behind You. There Is Nothing In It Anymore. You Feel Empty And Sick,  _Ill_. You Can't Do This. But Maybe You Can.

Your Once-Was Pushes You On, Nudges You. Tears Roll Down Your Cheeks From Your Eyes. Two Heads. Two Beings. You Think. That Was. Important.  _Vital_.

But You Don't Know Why. You Feel Void Yet Brimming. You Want An End. (You Were The End?)

But You Are Not Now. You Are Only Nothing, Now. You Belong To Him. He Is The One Who Holds More Names To Give To You. You Know That You Cannot Leave, And You Do Not Want To. But You Do Not  _Know_  What You Want. You Do Not Know What You Once Were.

And It Is Tearing You Apart. You Don't Know When You'll Collapse.

* * *

**Edia**

you howl and stumble. YOU CANNOT KEEP DOING THIS. your name tastes like brimstone and metal. YOU ARE SO SICK OF IT.

you eat the foliage around you, chewing with flat, sharp, flat, sharp teeth. FLAT SHARP FLAT SHARP. you yearn to feel water on your fur and wheat tickling your nose. YOU ARE NOT SURE WHAT THOSE ARE, THOUGH. you miss yourself, you long for what once-was. YOU DO NOT NOTICE YOUR BRETHREN. they are almost-dead-things anyway. YOU ARE TOO.

you miss being able to run. YOU MISS BEING ABLE TO CRACK THUNDER AND FLASH LIGHTNING. but you do not know what these thoughts are. THEY ARE DISTANT AND FOGGY; vague feelings and images that you cannot name. WHEN YOUR ONCE-WAS-BROTHER LAGS IN THE CIRCLE, YOU CLAW AT HIS TAIL AND RIP PIECES OF METAL FROM A SCALE AWAY. you crunch the metal but it tastes like your crumb-name so you spit it out.

YOU ARE HUNGRY. you are thirsty. EMACIATED. dehydrated.

YOU ARE DYING. and you're okay with that.

* * *

**Cieyar**

You're blind. You cannot feel, and you are sick of it, so sick of it. Your name. It is like rocks and it tumbles within you without pause. Without receding. Without a pattern, without a push and pull. You're blind. You cannot see the sky and you cannot hear the ocean.

You don't. Know what those are, anyway, because you do not have any memories. Only loss. You have no pattern to your steps and you wish you'd be able to see, if only to be able to look upward. You can't.

_You can't_.

You've broken pattern, you've  _broken **pattern.**_ No, no, it was- The last thing you had, the last thing you could cling to. But it's gone, it's gone and you swing your head back and forth back and forth  _back and forth and you hit things **and blood gushes down your head and into your eyes AND YOU REALIZE THEY ARE OPEN AND YOU CANNOT SEE CANNOT FEEL AND YOU'VE BROKEN PATTERN**_

it's almost like a tidal wave, wrapping around you. drowning you.

you cannot see and you cannot hear and you cannot feel.

you're drowning.


End file.
